Imagine you are mayor of the village on the atoll of Amanu, population 157. You see a few cruising boats each season - those that are coming up from Isles Gambiers, none from the Marquesas make it this far south. Suddenly you have 12 boats arriving within a few days of each other! What is going on? The way the mayor responded was to invite us all to lunch. We couldn't go empty-handed, so each boat took a dessert to share. The result was fantastic - fresh smoked fish spear gunned by some of the

Punched the tide a bit and got into the atoll at 10am and are now anchored close to the surrounding reef with some protection ahead of us for E/SE winds. Gorgeous spot.

Seems the lagoon is somewhat full as there was no slack water at low tide. Abraxas gave it a go, but

So having said that Amanu is where we expect, it's where the main charting application I use expects

Another few miles, another time zone change. I feel sorry for the Tuamotus as they are in the same time zone as Tahiti, but nowhere near as far west. They suffer with early nights and light mornings. So we are now at UTC-10 or 11 hours behind the UK due to summertime. We will be on this time zone for a couple of months - until we leave French Polynesia. Then we have one more time zone to cross before we do the international date line as we head to Tonga. All well onboard. Champagne sailing ove

The radar is invaluable when navigating in the atolls. The charts may not be accurate, but the radar shows you what's there. However the atolls are not very high. Here we are 9 miles from Tenararo but we can't actually see it visually. The radar has a good return from the island, at least enough so you know to avoid! And this is the electronic chart showing the range. In this case, it matches the radar so the chart may well be correct too. You definitely need to keep your wits about you th

90 minutes ago we sailed out from under the grey, depressing, raining cloud and into sunshine! The wind shifted, we gybed the gennaker and we’re making pretty good progress towards Amanu. The batteries are charging. Towels, wet weather gear and the boat are drying out. Its like we’re back in the tropics again :) Hope this holds for the next few days - its forecast to, but we’re a bit wary of forecasts now.

Farewell Rikitea, though when we left the conditions were not as nice as this... Instead we could see a squall coming. We planned to get out and around into the main channel and deep water before the squall, which we did. However after that squall we got a monster. 40knot winds, driving rain reducing the visibility to near zero. Our plan to anchor behind the reefs in a nice bay on the NW side of Taravai was not going to work. In fact anchoring anywhere wasn't going to work. So we either loiter

…when someone is on strike. We joke about this, but it turns out to be true surprisingly often. We missed a rocket launch in French Guyana because the bus drivers were on strike - admittedly not the day of the planned launch, but the day to which the launch was postponed! We chalked that one up to being unlucky. Here in French Polynesia, we were expecting a flight on Tuesday - so were the guests at Gabriel’s little ‘pension’ (hotel) - as they needed to return to jobs back in Tahiti. Un

We have plenty of pamplemousse, papaya, lemons, squash and a huge hand of bananas. Half a tank of diesel, enough petrol. Eggs we collect from the farm this afternoon when we clear out of Isles Gambiers ready to head to the Tuamotus, also known as the Dangerous Archipelago. Why dangerous? Before radar and gps, the low lying atolls were infamous for ships going onto their reefs. Now, it's relatively straightforward - though the charts are not always totally correct, they are a good deal better t

Lovely sunrise this morning over the atoll... We are now back in the busy Rikitea anchorage ready to provision for the next few days before heading north to the Tuamotus (aka the Dangerous Archipelago). Newly arrived here is the Claymore 2, the supply ship for Pitcairn. It comes here from New Zealand and shuttles back and forth a couple of times before returning. We see that Henderson Island is in the news today for the amount of plastic garbage that gets accumulate there. Being uninhabited,

Two flights a week arrive and leave from Mangareva Airport, so it's not particularly busy. The airport isn't actually on Mangareva, but on one of the larger motus which form the outer reef of the atoll. Occasionally a private jet arrives - last week it was to bring the guests to the super yacht Plan B. Though Plan B is equipped with a helicopter, that has insufficient range to bring the guests out... We snuck ashore to get some photos on Monday as flights are normally Tuesday and Saturday. Th

We had thought we might escape to one of the motus on the surrounding reef but the weather was a bit windy. A good day for a hike! Anthony and I headed up Mokoto - the second highest peak on a Mangareva and got some great views of the surrounding reef and the anchorage. It was quite a steep climb in places over slippery pine needles, but definitely worth it. However I think we'll pass on climbing Mount Duff!! On the way down, I managed to get a couple of pamplemousse - the grapefruit like

After any passage, there are usually jobs to be done on arrival. 2 of the jobs for here were locating some more diesel and cooking gas. One way to get diesel here is to meet a supply ship. They will sometimes allow you alongside to take diesel but often only if you want a lot (300litres or more). Otherwise you can buy a barrel of diesel which holds 200 litres. Much like LPG, you have to have an empty barrel for them to fill/exchange. The barrels aren’t cheap - so this makes things a little mo

For the first time in nearly 6 weeks the boat is completely still. The anchorage is flat calm helped by the complete lack of wind! Welcome to Rikitea on the island of Mangareva, Isles Gambiers.

We left Pitcairn basked in glorious sunshine. We arrived at Isles Gambiers in gloomy conditions with, you guessed it, almost no wind. It will take us a few more hours to get around to the anchorage though we will probably give up sailing and motor given we have a mighty 3.7knots of wind now...

Winds weren't enough overnight to get us into Isles Gambiers safely in daylight today, so we are now aiming for the western entrance with an eta of tomorrow at dawn. From there it's 8nm to the anchorage, so by this time tomorrow we will be anchor in calm, protected anchorage. We have some sleep to catch up on!!

Before lunch we had a look at the Pitcairn Museum. Nicely air conditioned it had a large number of items from the Bounty, including the ships bible and a canon. Well worth the $5 entry fee. Then it was time for lunch. Olive laid on an absolute feast of a lunch. All delicious with lots of locally grown veg - something we were very pleased to see as we'd run out of fresh veg a long time back. The corn-on-the-cob was delicious as was the salad. It was all lovely! After lunch, Olive dropped two o

7am on our 3rd anniversary of sailing out of Portsmouth saw us approaching another UK territory. Pitcairn, famed as the ultimate destination of the mutineers from HMS Bounty. We'd known it would be a difficult stop and that we may arrive with no weather window to stop, especially coming from 3600nm away. However we were in luck. We'd get a day ashore though with the wind building from the SE it would be difficult to anchor. As we arrived, Kristian on the trimaran Aldebaran hailed us in the VHF

We are now at UTC-9, ready for Isles Gambiers. A little early on the change but we like the early morning sun, so it suites us to change now. Incredibly, whilst the iDevices recognise Rikitea in its time zone configuration, OSX on the mac has no entry for Rikitea, Mangareva or Isles Gambiers even though it one for Pitcairn!